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Here’s a message from Bard Math Professor Lauren Rose. Lauren is the co-founder and faculty co-advisor of the Bard Math Circle. – Japheth
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Dear Colleagues and friends,

The Bard Math Dept/Bard Math Circle presents two talks about the card game SET®, next Wed evening and Thursday afternoon.  The first talk is for a general audience (appropriate for high school students) and the second is more geared toward math majors.

Below is a press release, followed by email announcements of the two talks.  Please forward widely to students, colleagues and community members, and print out and post the attached flyer.

Thanks,

Lauren

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BARD COLLEGE MATH DEPARTMENT HOSTS LECTURE ON MATHEMATICS IN THE GAME OF SET®

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—On Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm in the Multipurpose Room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center, Bard College’s department of mathematics hosts a talk by guest speaker Elizabeth McMahon, professor of mathematics at Lafayette College. McMahon will deliver the lecture, “Game, SET®, Math! Mathematics in the Game of SET®.” This event, intended for a general audience, is free and open to the public.

The card game SET® is a popular award-winning game played with a special deck of 81 cards. Through combinatorics, probability, linear algebra, and geometry, a player can learn a lot about the game. In this talk, McMahon will explore some of the things we can learn about the game by looking at the mathematics behind it. Furthermore, by using the game to help with visualization, this lecture also explores how the game of SET® can deepen one’s understanding of mathematics. To learn more about the game or to practice playing before the talk, go to www.setgame.com for the rules and a Daily Puzzle.

Dr. Elizabeth McMahon is Professor of Mathematics at Lafayette College. She earned an A.B. from Mount Holyoke College, an M.S. in Mathematics at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Originally trained in non-commutative ring theory, her current research interests are in combinatorics, finite geometry, and Cayley graphs. She has held visiting positions at numerous institutions, including the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, U.K. and the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science at Rutgers University. She has been recognized for her teaching through several awards, including the James P. Crawford EPADEL Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America in 2005.

	Game, SET, Math! Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:30 p.m., Campus Center, Multipurpose Room A lecture by Elizabeth McMahon Lafayette College The card game SET is an award-winning, addictive game played with a special deck of 81 cards. We can learn a lot about the game through combinatorics, probability, linear algebra and geometry.  In this talk, we will explore some of the things we can learn about the game by looking at the mathematics behind it, and we’ll also see that you can learn more about mathematics using the game to help with visualization.  If you would like some practice with the game before the talk, go to www.setgame.com for the rules and a Daily Puzzle. Dr. Elizabeth McMahon is Professor of Mathematics at Lafayette College. She earned an A.B. from Mount Holyoke College, an M.S. in Mathematics at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Originally trained in non-commutative ring theory, her current research interests are in combinatorics, finite geometry, and Cayley graphs. She has held visiting positions at numerous institutions, including the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, UK and the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science at Rutgers University. She has been recognized for her teaching through several awards, including the James P. Crawford EPADEL Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America in 2005.  This event, intended for a general audience, is free and open to the public. For more information: contact Lauren Roser rose@bard.edu. Sponsor(s): Mathematics Program and Bard Math Circle.
	Using SET to Explore Affine Geometry Thursday, April 19, 2012 3:30 p.m., Hegeman 308 A lecture by Elizabeth McMahon Lafayette College The cards in the game of SET are an excellent model for the finite affine geometry AG(4,3).  We will explore how to use the game to visualize the structure of the geometry.  We will focus on complete caps, which correspond to largest possible collections of cards with no sets.  There is an interesting structure to these caps, and even more, the geometry can be partitioned into disjoint complete caps together with a single point closely related to the caps. For more information: contact Lauren Rose rose@bard.edu. Sponsor(s): Mathematics Program.

I thought that this VW Bug was really cool when I found it on Facebook. Then I realized it was a tessellation! If you don’t know what a Tessellation is you should come to one of our upcoming Math Circles! Jeannette designed a really cool activity about tessellations.

Japheth mentioned a few weeks ago MoMath’s “Math Monday” series. I was looking for activities to do this semester with our Circles, and I found this activity. There are many decks in my house that haven’t been used in years, so I decided to try one for myself.

This is my attempt a deltoidal hexecontahedron. (deltoid = kite, hexeconta = sixty). The construction turned out a little warped in some places; nevertheless, it was a good way to spend an afternoon!

For those of you who are just waiting for the Museum of Mathematics to open in Manhattan:

• The wonderful MoMath Activities are now available on their website. You’ve enjoyed building the Hyperbolic Parabola Model and the Hexatetra Flexagon at the Bard Math Circle. Now download and try them all!

• The Math Midway is at New Jersey’s Liberty Science Center through January 22, 2012.
• MoMath is sponsoring monthly Math Encounters at Baruch College in Manhattan. These are public talks that celebrate the spectacular world of mathematics. Most amazingly, these are FREE (but you must register to reserve your seat). Recommended for human beings age 12 to adult.

One of the Bard Math Circle parents sent us this link: The Reel Math Challenge, which is a contest sponsored by MATHCOUNTS. For those who don’t know, MATHCOUNTS is a national, middle school level math competition that promotes excellence in math education through problem-solving. More on that later.

The Reel Math Challenge is a team competition, and the goal is to make the best teaching video that explains a solution to one of the 270 problems in the MATHCOUNTS School Handbook. Each team consists of 4 student Team Members and 1 Team Advisor (an adult).

Interested? This could be a great Bard Math Circle activity, but time is running out. Send a friendly email to bardmathcircle@gmail.com if you’d like to volunteer to be a Team Advisor, and we’ll try to connect you with a team.

Now, more about excellence in math education through problem-solving. Each month we offer an engaging sheet of math problems. Math competitions such as

• Purple Comet (purplecomet.org)
• MOEMS (moems.org)
• MATHCOUNTS (www.mathcounts.org)
• Math Meets (www.mathmeets.com)
• AMC8 (amc.maa.org/amc8/)

The Bard Math Circle traveled to Bailey Middle School on Kingston this past Friday; students worked on challenge problems based on a set done in Rhinebeck last April. For one of the problams, students were asked to find how many bit-strings of length n (n-bit strings) there are, given that a single bit is either a 0 or a 1. For example, there are four 2-bit strings (00, 01, 10, 11) and eight 3-bit strings (000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111).

There are two strategies (maybe more!) that can be used to solve this problem. The first is to write out all of the bit-strings of length 2, 3, 4, etc, and try to find a pattern. The other is to create an algorithm for finding all bit-strings of length m from bit-strings of length m-1, and then write a formula using this information. Can you do it?

Here’s a great youtube video of a math circle in Richmond, CA, run by Sue VanHattum, called the Math Salon. Sue has set up her event in many ways similar to what we have done at the Bard Math Circle – a great selection of mathematical activities with enough structure to support curious children and their parents, but not so much to make it overly regimented.

Sue also writes the blog Math Mama Writes…, which besides regular reflections, offers lists of Math Education Books, Games and Math Books. What a great math resource!

Yesterday my children and I attended the Math Circle at Kingston Library.  On the way home I asked them each what their favorite part of the Math Circle was.  Jordan said ” When I beat Jeannette at 21 Nim!” followed by her trademark giggle.   Michael enjoyed the time the Xingye spent with him explaining square roots and especially liked that Xingye signed his cast in Chinese.  Alisa liked playing with the magnetic shapes.  I loved all the energy in the room and seeing parents and children having fun using their math skills!